cloud licensing

The cloud licensing market in 2026 has morphed from a transactional reseller economy into a strategic services landscape where the right partner can save millions, accelerate AI projects, and reduce vendor lock‑in risk — this feature examines the ten cloud licensing partners that dominate the...

Microsoft now faces a landmark, potentially industry‑reshaping legal fight in the United Kingdom: a collective action accusing the company of using Windows Server licensing rules to penalize customers who run workloads on rival clouds — an approach that, claimants say, has the effect of steering...

Microsoft’s headline AI moves on December 11–12—rolling OpenAI’s GPT‑5.2 into Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Studio, announcing a major set of partnerships with Indian IT giants, and reaffirming a multi‑billion dollar infrastructure commitment in India—arrived on the same trading day that a...

Microsoft has begun rolling OpenAI’s GPT‑5.2 into Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Studio, placing a new two‑mode model family—GPT‑5.2 Instant for fast day‑to‑day writing and translation, and GPT‑5.2 Thinking for deeper reasoning and planning—directly into the flow of office work and agent...

Microsoft returned to a London antitrust tribunal this week to argue that a proposed collective action seeking up to £2.1 billion over Windows Server licensing should be blocked at the gate because the claimants — led by competition lawyer Maria Luisa Stasi — have not identified a viable legal...

Microsoft told a UK judge that a planned mass lawsuit over its cloud licensing is defective because the claim’s methodology cannot reliably identify who suffered loss or by how much, a procedural attack that — if successful — would block a high‑stakes Collective Proceedings Order and leave...

Microsoft is defending itself against a sweeping £2.1 billion class claim in the UK that accuses the company of deliberately making it more expensive and operationally awkward for thousands of British businesses to run Windows Server on rival cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS)...

Microsoft is back in the dock over cloud licensing, and this time the dispute sits at the intersection of antitrust law, enterprise procurement strategy, and the future shape of the cloud market itself — a dispute that could change how UK organisations buy and run Windows Server workloads...

The UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal has begun a pivotal review of whether a collective £2.1 billion lawsuit alleging discriminatory cloud-licensing and pricing by Microsoft should be certified and allowed to proceed to a full trial, a legal moment with potentially far-reaching consequences for...

Microsoft now faces the prospect of a landmark UK collective action that accuses the company of a deliberate, coherent abusive strategy to penalise businesses that run Windows Server on rival clouds — an allegation that, if allowed to proceed, could reshape enterprise licensing, cloud...

Microsoft is fighting to prevent a proposed multi‑billion‑pound collective suit over Windows Server licensing from becoming a full, jury‑style testing ground for how software giants price and tie their products to cloud infrastructure — a battle that could reshape cloud procurement, licensing...

Microsoft faced a fresh challenge in the UK on 11 December 2025 as a Competition Appeal Tribunal hearing considered whether a mass damages claim alleging abusive cloud-licensing practices should be certified — a case that accuses the company of deliberately imposing higher costs for running...

A new national survey shows AI chatbots have moved from novelty to routine in many U.S. teenagers’ lives: roughly two-thirds of teens report using chatbots and nearly three in ten say they use them every day. The finding arrives amid legal, regulatory, and industry shifts that make this moment...

Microsoft will tell judges at the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) that a proposed mass claim accusing it of anti‑competitive cloud licensing practices should be struck out because the plaintiffs’ methodology for proving common liability and quantifying loss is flawed, a move that puts the...

Google’s cloud antitrust complaint against Microsoft has been quietly folded into a much larger regulatory test of the industry: the company has formally withdrawn its EU complaint after Brussels opened a trio of Digital Markets Act (DMA) market investigations into cloud computing services...

Alphabet’s Google has withdrawn its formal EU antitrust complaint alleging that Microsoft’s cloud licensing practices locked customers into Microsoft Azure, a move timed immediately after the European Commission launched a broad market investigation into the cloud sector under the Digital...

Google’s decision to withdraw its formal EU antitrust complaint against Microsoft’s cloud practices is a tactical retreat that hands the agenda to Brussels — but it does not end the contest over how hyperscale cloud markets are regulated, nor the substantive claims about customer lock‑in and...

Google’s decision to formally withdraw the antitrust complaint it lodged against Microsoft last year is a tactical retreat that hands the baton to Brussels — but it does not close the dispute over how Microsoft prices and licenses Windows Server, SQL Server and related workloads for use on rival...

A high‑stakes, potentially precedent‑setting legal push against Microsoft over its cloud licensing policies is gathering momentum in the UK: competition lawyer Dr Maria Luisa Stasi is pressing a proposed collective claim worth roughly £2 billion that alleges thousands of UK organisations were...

Google Cloud has publicly reminded regulators that it filed a formal antitrust complaint against Microsoft’s cloud licensing practices one year ago — and warns that little has changed while competitors, customers and regulators continue to grapple with pricing, portability and potential vendor...